


and a blade between them

by friendly_ficus



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Intimacy, M/M, Shaving, a fic so self-indulgent..., caleb-typical angst, if they didn’t want me to think about the blood pact they shouldn’t have made the blood pact, it’s really all about blades with them huh?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:21:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27278677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendly_ficus/pseuds/friendly_ficus
Summary: “Tilt your head back,” Fjord murmurs, voice low in the quiet room. Caleb does.(Caleb and Fjord, a series of sharp edges.)
Relationships: Fjord/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 7
Kudos: 96





	and a blade between them

**Author's Note:**

> you can read this in conjunction with my other widofjord fic ( _amber light, bending_ ) but they’re not super connected, just kinda similar vibes. i like these two :) they’re interesting to write. this fic isn’t really meant as a ‘will they get together yes or no’ and is more a ‘they basically are together but haven’t Talked About Feelings because of angst reasons.’ kind of an established relationship, but not established enough for me to use the tag lol. when does it take place? no idea

The room is humid, just steamy enough to fog the mirror a little. Caleb is writing, quill scratching over the notes on the side table for what feels like the hundredth time. 

(It’s the twelfth, actually. He’s always counting.)

He doesn’t have to look at them, knows the layout with his eyes shut, but he can’t bring himself to leave them alone. He returns to his equations, forays into arcane theory so outlandish that he wouldn’t show them to Essek even if they  _ were  _ on good terms, for fear he’d be laughed out of the room. Maybe he could now, actually. Essek doesn’t seem likely to laugh any of the Nein out of any room in the near future.

He’s puzzling over the latest proof, unable to work through the premises—the introduction to dunamancy has turned it all on its head, has made previous rules unreliable. He’s puzzling over the latest proof because it keeps his mind off of the quiet sound of the shaving kit being assembled behind him.

It’s nearly cliché at this point , Fjord and Caleb and a blade between them. But tonight there’s a party, and Caleb’s lost his razor, and. Well, Fjord  _ offered. _ Surely it’s not such a chore to him, if he offered so easily.

(“I’m not the greatest barber in the world,” Fjord says, the ghost of a grin around his eyes. “But I won’t use a greatsword, so that’s an improvement.”

It’s unsettlingly easy to laugh in the warm light of the tower, cradled in the gift he’s woven around all of them. It’s simple to forget himself, alone with Fjord while the others rush around chattering about formalwear and cover identities and whatever they’re planning to get up to tonight.

“Caleb,” he laughs, warm. “We’re together in this, I don’t mind. Let me help, hm? Gives me something to do.”

Caleb, damn him to the depths of the Nine Hells, can never leave an offer on the table. Not one from Fjord, at least.)

“Tilt your head back,” Fjord murmurs, voice low in the quiet room. 

Caleb does.

\---

It’s a conscious choice he has to make, to not manipulate Fjord. He sees the levers too easily, knows what he could lean on. Fjord is a protector; Caleb could ask for protection. Fjord is a friend; Caleb could twist that, could use it for something. Fjord wants to be strong, the reasons have changed but Caleb knows him and Fjord  _ wants to be powerful,  _ it would be so easy to offer just a little, to go to sea with just the two of them and unlock one last door with the key that Caleb wears around his neck.

He won’t. He _won’t_ but that doesn’t mean he _wouldn’t_ if he needed to, he isn’t certain what he’d do if he needed to, and he has no way at all to come to terms with it. He hates it, when he dwells on it for long enough, that this part of the training got its hooks in him too deeply to be cut out. That if he tilts his head to the side he can look at Fjord as a puzzle instead of a person.

These days, of course, when he tilts his head to the side Fjord is already looking back. Yes, something has shifted—but has it shifted  _ enough? _

\---

It would be a lie to say he loses time in the careful  _ shhk  _ of the razor. Caleb never loses time; he nearly never loses anything, if you ignore ten years of his life and the bright future he’d dreamed of before them.

Fjord’s hands are steady and calm, his razor sharp. He tilts Caleb’s head with little motions, a nudge here or there to make the skin taut where he needs it to be. He seems content not to speak.

It’s not like it was, the times when Yasha did it. There’s less of a risk; Fjord’s not so inclined to cut his throat, these days, and he has the right tools for the job. And it feels different, beyond that. He’s making a different kind of offering, he thinks, but he and Fjord are always making offerings together.

Fjord’s hand on his face is unsurprising, but he doesn’t guide Caleb in any direction. He sets his thumb at the corner of his mouth and pulls gently, the razor a whisper across the skin beneath Caleb’s nose. And then he moves on, and Caleb feels a brief pang of loss. He leans, chasing the contact.

“Caleb,” Fjord murmurs again, a hint of humor in it. “Head back.”

“Ah, forgive me.” There’s a blush crawling up his face, he can feel it. It’s probably visible beneath the lather.

“I do,” Fjord says, like he isn’t talking about this at all. 

Caleb says nothing more, for fear that, that. The fact of the matter is that Fjord knows nearly all of what he’s done, now, and he has the sense that in this room he could say anything. He could say  _ anything,  _ and Fjord might forgive that, too. He doesn’t know if he can bear it.

The razor is a ghost across his neck, so sharp he almost doesn’t feel it. He’s caught up in the gentle pressure of Fjord’s fingertips, the split-second where the knuckles brush the underside of his jaw. At some point he set down his quill, because his own hands are hanging limp at his sides and his shoulders are more relaxed than they’ve been in ages.

“Surprised you trust me with this,” Fjord teases, stepping away and returning with a shockingly cold rag that he uses to clean away excess foam. The contrast is everything, for a moment, the warm room and Fjord’s warm voice and the cold water and Caleb’s skin tightening with each drop that hits it.

“I trust you,” he says, a little hoarse, and he opens his eyes. 

Fjord meets his gaze in the mirror, eyes burning with that mix of fondness and exasperated  _ of course you do  _ and something more complicated, caught in the sting of seawater and the bright pain of the cuts on their hands, wrapped in a night with the falchion leveled at his throat. Or Caleb’s projecting. It happens.

He sits up, taking the wet rag. Their hands touch.

Caleb abruptly misses it—the bright, stinging line on his palm. Tangible proof of, of  _ something.  _

There’s not even a scar to show for it, but, well. 

Fjord twists a little closer, movements casual, and clasps their hands together anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> dipping my toes into the Caleb POV with this one, not a character i usually work with but i hope it was decent!!  
> something something intimacy and trust and debt something something. widofjord good. there’s a long part of this i cut that was just buttoning each other’s shirt cuffs and straightening jackets and stuff. i warned yall this was self-indulgent. anyway maybe someday i’ll write the party they’re going undercover-as-a-couple (but also the are we/aren’t we a couple convo) lol, i have some notes on it but it’s a much more involved fic and i have not written it yet  
> leave a comment and let me know what you think! they mean a lot to me :)


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